Citizen Science on the Radio: WHYY features Old Weather from Zooniverse

By Lily Bui, Mar 07, 2014

l_log1200
Craig Bruns of the Independence Seaport Museum flips through an old weather log book (Kimberly Haas/for The Pulse)

This week on The Pulse and SciStarter’s segment about citizen science, producer Kimberly Haas takes a look at Zooniverse’s Old Weather, a project that dives into weather’s past in order to study our climate’s future.

Old Weather is a Zooniverse project that dives into historical archives of weather observations. Citizen scientists can browse through online archival data of ship logs from decades past, then help transcribe and digitize them so that researchers can access them more easily. These transcriptions will contribute to climate model projections and hopefully knowledge of past environmental conditions. Historians will use this work to track past ship movements and tell the stories of the people on board.

Read WHYY’s related blog post to learn more. Listen to the piece below.

What is Old Weather from National Maritime Museum on Vimeo.

Here’s where you can help. If you’re a citizen science researcher, project manager, or participant in the PA, NJ, or DE areas, we want to hear from you! If you have an interesting story to share about a citizen science project or experience, let us know. Send your stories for consideration to Lily@SciStarter.com.

whyy_blue1

 

WHYY (90.9 FM in Philly) Friday on-air schedule:

6-9 a.m. – Morning Edition
9-10 a.m. – The Pulse
10 a.m. to 12 p.m. – Radio Times
10 a.m. following Sunday  – The Pulse (rebroadcast)

Categories: Citizen Science, Climate & Weather

About the Author

Avatar

Lily Bui

Although she holds dual non-science bachelors’ degrees in International Studies and Spanish from the University of California Irvine, Lily has long harbored a proclivity for the sciences. A daughter of an engineer and an accountant who also happen to be a photographer and musician, respectively, Lily grew up on the nexus between science and art. Lily has worked on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.; served a year in AmeriCorps in Montgomery County, Maryland; worked for a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter in California; and performed across the U.S. as a touring musician. She currently works with WGBH-TV Boston and Public Radio Exchange (PRX) in Cambridge. In her spare time, she thinks of cheesy science puns (mostly to entertain herself). // Tweets @dangerbui